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On Thursday, we learned that O.J. Simpson died after a battle with cancer. He was 76 years old. In the mid-1990’s, his murder trial dominated news coverage and divided a nation. Today, Jim and Greg look back, but not as a trip down memory lane. Instead, it’s about understanding why this was such a massive story and the impact that the O.J. saga still has on our nation today.
Younger Americans may know him only as an accused murderer, if they remember him at all. If you’re a bit older, you remember the star athlete, actor, and football commentator who was beloved throughout the nation. It’s a fall from grace that Jim and Greg chronicle to explain just how stunning it was that Simpson was accused of murdering ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman.
From there, Jim and Greg dig into the legal and media circus that played out in the murder trial, on the news, in late night television and beyond. The story engulfed our culture in ways that we still feel today – and not for the better.
Finally, they examine the legacy of O.J. at his death – nearly 30 years after he was accused of two savage murders.
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Published in: General
Will we ever come to a point where we drop “accused” and say, “Simpson murdered two people.” I believe he did.
It might be safe from lawsuits now that he’s dead. Although who knows what his “estate” might do?
Also the “Police Squad” movies…
I was watching the coverage of OJ passing at lunch today and a commentator mentioned that the Los Angeles Police Department was at a particularly low ebb of trust and respect by the public during the trial in 1994.
The next story was the FISA renewal drama in DC. Funny how history rhymes.
One of Norm Macdonald’s bits in the previously-posted videos was that the LAPD brought along evidence to plant against OJ but then didn’t bother when they realized he really did it.
Twitter was good yesterday with plenty mentions of Norm and sharing of videos. As someone commented, Norm dies and Norm trends on Twitter. OJ dies and Norm trends on Twitter.
I love the Howard Cossell meme for the depth of craziness that will surround Bruce and OJ, how they will become connected, and, as Greg mentions, we get the Kardashians. Who would believe how the future unfolded?
Ah, it’s already in my Media Library.
One moment from the O.J. story that stuck with me:
This was early in the story, after his arrest but before the wall-to-wall trial coverage. There was some TV reporter doing one of those spots from in front of the police station, jail, or courthouse, and she was apparently unfamiliar with O.J. Simpson because she actually called him “Orange Juice Simpson” in her report. It was beautiful.
That’s pretty good. My favorites are probably when American TV announcers for the Olympics one year, kept referring to athletes from Zimbabwe etc, as “African-American,” and when showing a “Palestinian” “funeral procession” some years ago, one of the “bodies” fell off a stretcher, got up, looked around, and ran away.
Maybe she went to school with the Orangejello and Lemonjello twins of urban myth fame so it seemed possible?
The way Alan Dershowitz explained it, the other day, was that the LAPD was caught with its pants down, tampering with some of the evidence to try to make sure that a heinous murderer didn’t get away with it. This backfired spectacularly and caused the jury to dismiss all of the evidence, even when it was valid.
However, what I remember is, some of the jurors slept through the trial. They weren’t interested in hearing the evidence, because they were there to acquit O.J. Simpson, period.
Thus, the defense did not fear a conviction; indeed, one of the jurors was a former Black Panther. What they did fear was a hung jury that would permit the inept prosecution to try again.
There was, of course, the mind-boggling stupidity of having O.J. Simpson try on the glove. In addition, the prosecutors had assumed that the black women on the jury would be sympathetic to Nicole Brown Simpson, when actually they resented her as a white interloper, who was “stealing our men”.
The defense could count on the black jurors to vote for acquittal out of racial loyalty; and all but one of the white jurors could be steamrolled into going along. The one juror they feared was a young white woman with a strong personality.
Accordingly, Judge Ito received an anonymous letter, purportedly from a secretary at a publishing house, accusing that white juror of shopping a book deal. The result was that she was removed from the trial and there were no further obstacles to an acquittal.
Of course, no such secretary at no such publisher was ever found. As I recall, that juror turned out to be the only one who wasn’t shopping a book deal.
The larger lesson here, that Jim Geraghty gets completely wrong (as usual), is that progressives will readily lie to get on a jury. Putting their hand on a Bible and swearing to tell the truth is nothing more than a quaint courtroom ritual to them.
This means that the best Donald Trump can hope for in his trials is a hung jury; and that’s assuming at least one juror both honest and brave made it through the various challenges.